KABUL: One year after Afghanistan strengthened human trafficking laws to prohibit the use of boys for sexual entertainment, there is little enforcement and trafficking is on the rise, experts say.
“Bacha bazi” – in which young boys are abducted by commanders who force them to dance and sexually abuse them – was explicitly prohibited for the first time in the updated anti-trafficking and smuggling law, enacted in January 2017.
This was significant because cultural taboos discourage open discussion of bacha bazi, said Wali Mohammad Kandiwal, author of a recent study on the new law.
One reason officials acknowledged bacha bazi was that anti-government militias began increasingly using young boys as weapons, said Meena Poudel, who heads the counter-trafficking project at the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
“Young boys are kidnapped by militant groups,” she said. “Once they use them sexually, they use them for suicide bombers.”
She added that the government has recognized that its security forces have also practiced bacha bazi.
